


Prove It To Me

by crossingwinter, Ever-so-reylo (Ever_So_Reylo)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (no poop tho), Alpha Rey (Star Wars), Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Lots of Butt Stuff, Misunderstandings, Omega Kylo Ren, Praise Kink, Sex Toys, all kinds of butt stuff, butt stuff, dating app, do not enter if you are squeamish about butt stuff, if it's doable with a butt it gets done
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:21:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22321006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ever_So_Reylo/pseuds/Ever-so-reylo
Summary: Rey hasn’t had expectations for Rutter in ages.  She’d gotten an account because that’s what Alphas did when they didn’t have Omegas. A whole pool of them at the tip of your fingers was what the marketing team—the same one who had picked the language ofyour Omega—had promised.  But no Omega wants an Alpha who can’t knot them when they’re in heat.  So for all Rey has swiped right, and right, and right, and right—she has never once matched, had stopped even expecting to match.So matching with Kylo—fuck she even remembers his profile, too, that’s how much she’d liked it—she really has to be hallucinating right now.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 586
Kudos: 2060
Collections: Reylo Pegging Fics





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> HI HELLO WELCOME TO OUR DUMB GARBAGE WE HOPE YOU ENJOY

When Rey first gets the notification, she thinks she’s hallucinating. 

But there it is, the little red notification on the lock screen of her phone. 

_ You’ve matched! Start a conversation with your Omega. _

She knows it’s pre-programmed language, probably chosen by a marketing team to stimulate every dumb biological instinct in her body, but her stomach curls when she sees the words “ _ Your Omega.” _

She opens the app immediately and sees—

Rey hasn’t had expectations for Rutter in ages. She’d gotten an account because that’s what Alphas did when they didn’t have Omegas. A whole pool of them at the tip of your fingers was what the marketing team—the same one who had picked the language of _your Omega_ —had promised. But no Omega wants an Alpha who can’t knot them when they’re in heat. So for all Rey has swiped right, and right, and right, and right—she has never once matched, had stopped even expecting to match.

So matching with Kylo—fuck she even remembers his profile, too, that’s how much she’d liked it—she really has to be hallucinating right now. Like most male Omegas, he’d posted a picture of his ass (clothed, thankfully—and artsy, too, a shot of him looking out over the lake from behind), and a picture of his back (more muscular than most male Omega profiles she’s seen) showing an unbitten mating gland. No picture of his face, but that isn’t uncommon. As far as attractive features went for Alphas in rut, faces aren’t half as interesting as these other characteristics, and Rutter is nothing if not designed for the Alpha’s gaze. And he had sure attracted Rey’s gaze.

She stares at the messaging section of the app. It shows a little green bubble next to the picture of Kylo’s ass, showing that he’s online. He’ll know she’s online. He’ll be waiting for her to message him. But she has no idea what to say.

_ Sandy: Hi there _

Fuck. What’s next? Fuck.

_ Kylo: Hello _

_ Sandy: How’s your evening going? _

She groans at herself. This is such a lame conversation he’s probably going to be running for the hills.

_ Kylo: Pre-heat cleaning. It usually kicks in about three days before. _

_ Sandy: That’s soon. What sort of Alpha are you looking for? _

There we go. She asked it. And now, she’ll wait as she watches the little  _ Kylo is typing _ notification at the foot of the messenger window. She’ll wait for him to say  _ sorry, it was an accident, I want a knot, _ and she’ll feign politeness, wish him a good day and an easy heat, and then go feel crushed in a corner. It’s worse, somehow, knowing that they’ve matched. That there was that hope that maybe they’d connect before he dropped her.

_ Kylo: I’m on pretty decent suppressants, so if you’ve got toys for assplay I’d appreciate it, but I think I can make it through without a proper knot. (Is that rude? I’ve never been with a female Alpha before. I don’t want to offend or anything.)  _

_ Kylo: Other than that, usual heat help. _

Rey practically sags with relief. Three days is plenty of time to make sure she has the right kind of toys for him and she has Amazon Prime so she can get free next-day delivery. Sure, she has a strap on, and some vibrators, but none of those have knot extensions because she’s never needed a knot extension before.

_ Sandy: I’d prefer the honesty to dancing around it, though I can’t speak for other fAlphas out there. It also helps me know what to make sure I have for you.  _

_ Sandy: I’ll be frank: I haven’t paired before. Most Omegas aren’t interested in an Alpha without a knot. How sure are you about this? Are you talking with other Alphas? _

_ Kylo: Just you _

_ Kylo: I’d like to do this with you, if you’d like me, Alpha _

Alpha. He called her Alpha. She swallows. She feels her heartbeat go a tick faster. 

_ Sandy: Do you have a preferred location for meeting? _

_ Kylo: I’ve gone to the hotel on North a few times. They have decent rooms, though I’m not sure we can get a reservation this close. _

Rey opens google and finds the place. 

_ Sandy: How long are your heats typically? _

_ Kylo: Three days _

Damn, the place is expensive. But Rey is more than willing to foot the bill for this.  _ Your Omega.  _

_ Sandy: Starting Friday? _

_ Kylo: Yeah _

_ Kylo: I’m happy to help pay for it _

_ Sandy: Nope. On me. _

So what if she doesn’t  _ quite _ have enough to eat for a few days next week until the second part of her bi-monthly paycheck comes through? Seeing an Omega through his heat. She’s going to see an Omega through his heat. 

She’ll be able to see if it really makes a difference, what everyone says about Omegas and Betas. She’ll know. And, more importantly, if it goes well…

But no—she’s been on other dating platforms long enough to know that she should absolutely under no circumstances let her heart get away with her head. 

She books the rooms and sends Kylo a note.

_ Sandy: Booked. Reservation under Johnson starting Friday. _

_ Kylo: Cool.  _

_ Kylo: See you then. Around noon? _

_ Sandy: See you then, Omega. _

She falls back onto her bed and clutches the phone to her chest. Then she squeals delightedly, kicking her legs up and down on her mattress in her excitement.  _ I have an Omega. Even if it’s only for the weekend, I have an Omega! _

Rey doesn’t know what to expect at all, but she does know one thing: she is determined to be the best, most attentive, most alpha Alpha Kylo has ever had. 

And she scoots back over to her laptop and begins feverishly researching anal plugs.

-

“What does ‘usual heat help’ mean?” Rey asks Finn when she next sees him. She’s read through the conversation with Kylo like fourteen times in the past day alone, spent all night on Reddit reading through recommendations for the best anal toys to get through your heat if you can’t get an Alpha to help you out and ordered three of them, as well as a knot extension that had been an option with the strap-on she’d bought three years before, but which she hadn’t actually purchased at the time. (Yes, her bank account will be suffering for probably longer than this coming week. No, she doesn’t care. She’s practically trembling when she thinks about Friday and Kylo.)

Finn looks up at her from his phone, a little surprised. They are walking home from their respective jobs, a daily ritual that is only possible because their offices are about five blocks apart, and he’d clearly been in the process of texting Rose when Rey had asked him that.

“You mean like… knotting?” he asks, clearly confused by the question.

Rey looks around. She’s not ashamed of being an Alpha, but it’s one thing to ask your best friend questions about heat sex in the comfort of your own living room and quite another to ask it on a crowded street corner when there are probably one hundred Betas in earshot, all of them probably annoyed that Finn stopped walking in confusion at Rey’s question during rush hour.

Rey drags Finn towards the edge of the sidewalk so that they’re under an awning and out of the way of commuters. “I matched,” she tells him breathlessly. There it is—that quivering feeling in her muscles again at the memory of it.  _ Your Omega.  _ Kylo. His name is Kylo. Or maybe that’s just a username, the way that hers is Sandy, but still. Kylo. “On Rutter. I’ve never matched before. And I’m seeing him through his heat this weekend.”

Finn’s face lights up. “Hey! Look at you!” he grins. She pulls out her phone and pulls up the conversation with Kylo for Finn to read through with her. “So—what does ‘usual heat help’ mean? I’m trying to make sure I’ve got my bases covered.” According to her emails from Amazon, her Prime shipments arrived while she was at the office, so she can check off his first request of ‘toys for assplay.’ 

“Hmm,” Finn says. “My guess is it’s probably all the cuddly fluffy things,” he says. “Telling him how good he is, how good he feels, you know?”

Rey bites her lip and says. “I—”

Rey has known Finn for years—longer than she’s known any other person who is still an active part of her life. She’s heard people say that Alphas have trouble being friends with one another—that’s never been her and Finn. Finn can practically read her mind. Which he does when he hears that split-second hesitation in her voice and catches the lip-biting.

“You’ve never been with an Omega in heat,” he observes.

Rey shakes her head. She’d thought Finn had known, but then again, they made a rule a long time ago that they don’t talk about their sex lives. Relationships, sure. It had been a big deal when he had found Rose—the only Omega he’d  _ ever _ encountered who could throw him for a loop and who had pursued him far more intensely than he’d ever pursued an Omega. But they’d been afraid that talking about sex would trigger the Alpha competitiveness, and neither of them wanted that anywhere near their friendship. Rey doesn’t know about Finn’s sex life with Rose. Just that he loves her and has been trying to get up the courage to ask her to be his mate. ( _ I’m surprised she hasn’t asked  _ you _ , _ Rey had laughed when he’d moaned about it one drunken night over pizza.) Rose had proven to both Rey and Finn that that stereotype of submissive Omegas who just need to know their place was a downright, flat-out lie. As if Rey hadn’t already—

No.

No, she’s not thinking about  _ him _ right now.

She refuses. Not while she’s got Kylo to think about taking care of.

“So when you say cuddly, fluffy things,” Rey says, forcing herself back to the conversation at hand and determined  _ not _ to think for one more second about  _ him _ than she absolutely has to, “you mean…”

“Snuggling. Lots and lots of snuggling. He’ll expect it, even if you can’t...you know…”  _ Knot him _ . “It makes them feel safe, being held after they’ve come. Heats can be scary. Like really scary for Omegas. Do you want to ask Rose some stuff? I’m sure she’d—”

“Scary how?” she presses him. It’s not that she doesn’t want to talk to Rose. She likes Rose. She trusts Rose. She’s glad that Finn has Rose, and that Rose makes Finn as happy as she does. But Rose  _ isn’t _ Finn.

“So like,” Finn looks around and drops his voice. “To hear Rose talk about it, when you go through your heat by yourself, you feel like you’re going to die. Like not literally, but your heart doesn’t stop racing, your body hurts, you just want  _ help _ all the time, and no one’s there to help you. And suppressants can help a little bit, but being held, being made to feel safe, not alone, all that—that’s super important. The fucking is important too, but if he’s asking for usual heat stuff, my guess is he wants to be held, and told he’s safe, and that you’ll take care of him, and that he’s good and pleasing.” Finn makes a face and they can both practically  _ hear _ Rose’s rant of  _ Look, it’s a fucked-up hardwiring of the brain that I feel as though I have to please you in order to not feel horrific and terrible. I would rather have medication for  _ that _ than suppressants because that’s just dehumanizing and demeaning and— _ and she’s not wrong.

_ Ok,  _ Rey thinks, then says aloud, “Keep him safe, keep him coming, make sure he knows how good—” she thinks about that picture of his back, muscular and broad with his gland right in the middle of it and gulps “—how good he feels. I can do that.”

“You can do it,” Finn says and he wraps an arm around her. People say that Alphas can’t be friends, that they don’t even like touching one another, but everything feels better when Finn’s got his arm around her, comforting her, reminding her that all that bullshit from the first part of her life is in the past. “He’s gonna be lucky he swiped right on you. Trust me. Alphas can spot shitty Alphas from a mile off, and you’re no shitty Alpha.”

She smiles up at him, a little shyly. It’s a weird pep-talk, knowing that Finn’s telling her she’ll be able to fuck and snuggle this stranger calm this weekend. But when he says the words, she is able to echo them and she starts quivering with excitement again.

_ Kylo, _ she thinks as they make their way across the street. She thinks of his ass, of his back. It’s going to feel incredible—being with him, riding him until he can’t breathe. She can tell. She can feel it down to her very core. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR THE LOVELY COMMENTS AND ENCOURAGEMENT WE LOVE YOU VERY MUCH 😭

Toothbrush. 

Toothpaste, and a razor, and 3-in-1 body wash—but no towels, since he doesn’t mind using the hotel’s.

Phone charger.

Two protein bars that he surely won’t eat—he hasn’t eaten in days because food, all food, the sheer _idea_ of food is revolting at this point. Though maybe his Alpha will get peckish, so in they go.

A change of clothes. Only one, for the trip back home.

Ben looks around for anything he might be forgetting, and his gaze falls on the half-empty bottle of lube on his bedside table. He almost rolls his eyes.

“Yeah. Right,” he mutters. 

Definitely not _that_. He’s on his third pair of underwear today. And he woke up two hours ago. 

Slowly, methodically, Ben fastens the zipper of his duffel bag. In the perfect silence of the room, the purring sound is almost too much for his unsteady nerve endings.

_Calm. It’s fine. Soon. Very soon._

In a display of truly excellent timing, his neighbor, a slightly younger male Alpha who moved in a couple of months earlier and who for some baffling reason appears to be unashamed of his love for Dave Matthews, comes home precisely as Ben is locking the door of his apartment.

_Ah. Shit._

Ben braces himself, even as the man’s reaction follows an all-too-predictable script. Spikes of lust, closely followed by surprise as he first senses Ben’s smell—yep, heated Omega—and then realizes that it’s coming from someone who couldn’t possibly be an Omega. Right? 

A six foot three, jacked, perennially hostile dude is not—he can’t be an Omega.

Can he?

Ben sighs, because this is nothing new. Ben assumes that other male Omegas who look like him—Omega who can _pass_ —get the same type of reaction when their designation becomes obvious. _If_ there are others, of course. Personally, Ben hasn’t met any.

“Hey,” the man calls after him after he passes by to get to the stairwell. “I—Do you maybe—”

Ben ignores him, and even on the brink of a heat, it costs him exactly zero effort. He is—very, _very_ picky, about his Alphas. And the one who’s waiting for him in a hotel not ten minutes from here—she looks… yeah.

Yeah.

_Soon._

First, though, he needs to make a stop, exactly two floors down. Hux has his usual expression on when he opens the door to find Ben—a mix of mockery and wariness and that _‘gross, there’s a fly in my soup_ ’ quality that is just pure Hux. 

“Well, well, well. Look what the cat dragged in.”

Ben hates Hux, and his overly clipped accent, and his bored expression as he leans against the doorjamb. Above all, he hates the fact that they’ve become, in an odd and twisted and entirely inexplicable way, friends. 

“I’ll be gone for three days. I need you to water my plant.”

Hux lifts one eyebrow. “Of course, your majesty. I don’t have anything going on, so I can drop whatever I was doing to take care of your potted ferns—”

“Shut up. Here are my keys.”

Hux extends his hand reflexively, but Ben tosses them on a piece of furniture cluttered with envelopes and a bag of something that could be weed, but knowing Hux is probably catnip. Ben really doesn’t feel like touching a Beta right now, however minimally or accidentally.

“Don’t you have a housekeeper, or something?”

Ben is taken aback. “Why would you think that?”

Hux shrugs. “You’re clearly not the type to iron a dress shirt or defrost a freezer, so I assumed—”

“On vacation.”

“Ah.” Hux makes a show of studying his fingernails. “Fine. I’ll water your stupid plants.”

“Plant. Singular.”

“Singular.”

“You’ll need to use distilled water. It’s by the sink.”

Hux frowns.“What kind of stupid high-maintenance plant needs distilled water?”

“It’s a Venus flytrap.”

“Jesus. Are you kidding me? That’s the most Omega plant I’ve ever—”

Ben steps a little closer—not enough to touch but enough to intimidate, and stares malignantly at Hux until he shuts the hell up. It’s not very Omega-like behavior, but then again, Ben’s _is_ picky about who gets to see him be his Omega self. 

Hux lowers his gaze immediately. “So… Is it that marvelous time of the year again?”

Technically, Ben’s heats are more frequent that once a year. But—“Yeah.”

“Ah. Who’s the lucky guy?”

“No one you know.”

“Try me, Solo.”

“It’s no one _I_ know.”

Hux nods. Maybe he understands, maybe he doesn’t. Most Betas go their entire lives without knowing that apps like Rutter exist. Hux might be one of them—Ben doesn’t care much.

“Well, do let me know how the new guy takes it, when he sees that his new Omega is built like a brickhouse and could probably bench press double his weight.”

“The plant, it needs water once a day.” Ben spins around and heads for the parking lot. “And it’s a she.”

“Uh? The plant?”

“The Alpha. It’s a she.”

He’s almost out of earshot when Hux shrills, “Wait. Wait, _what_? Are you going to—”

The entrance door closes behind him with a thud. Ben steps into the humid, sticky air and forbids himself from touching any of his glands—all of them, but especially _the one_. He also pointedly tries not to think about what his Alpha’s reaction will be when she first sees him and realizes exactly how… how _un-Omega_ he is. The pictures… The pictures he uploaded on the app are his own, of course, but photos have a way of hiding Ben’s… presence. Whenever he’s used Rutter in the past, his matches have always seemed a little taken aback by him. By the way he is. 

_Built like a true Alpha_ , Ben’s father had told him uncountable times with a lopsided grin. And then he’d raised his voice and all but yelled, _And already acts like one, too. He gets it from me_ , so that Ben’s mother could hear him from her study, or wherever else she’d holed up to do her beloved, precious work. 

She would always quip back something simultaneously cutting and affectionate. _Sure._ My _family’s been exclusively Alphas for the past five generations, but whatever you want to tell yourself, flyboy._

There had been the usual bickering between his parents then, one of their never-ending squabbles that had made Ben want to roll his eyes and always culminated with Han winking while trying to placate Leia by declaring something to the gist of, _Well, it doesn’t matter where he gets it from. All that matters is that he_ is _one._

And then. 

Then Ben had turned fourteen. And fifteen. And sixteen. And unlike pretty much everyone else around him, he hadn’t presented. Year after year, and month after crawling month, the smiles had become more tense, and Han’s arm had been thrown around Ben’s shoulders less frequently, and his parents had begun to barely tease each other anymore—and had started to argue about _everything_. 

Well. Mostly about him.

After that—Ben had turned seventeen. 

Presenting had felt like a cruel, useless formality by that point. Only one designation manifests so late, after all. So when it finally happened, Benjust sat there. Sat on the edge of the mattress he’d slept on his whole life, while the sheets became drenched with pooling slick and precum. He’d felt that terrifying, throbbing soreness on his upper back and told himself, _This. This is what you are. There is no other story for you._

_Omega._

The smiles, and the claps on his shoulders, and… any type of touch, really—they had all stopped. And then, years later… then his parents had found the Alpha they’d always wanted, and—it must be these fucking heat hormones, because Ben has no idea why he’s suddenly reminiscing about all of this after more than a decade.

Fuck this shit. And fuck the past. It doesn’t warrant his energy, his _anything_ , and Ben is about to go into heat—just a few more hours—and for once it’s not a complete inconvenience, because he hasn’t gotten laid in…. Jesus, _months_ , and Sandy, if that’s even her name, sounds eager and great and it’s as if her abs from her Rutter profile pic have burned themselves onto the back of his eyelids, and—

A female Alpha.

_Fuck_.

Ben’s not—male Alphas are _fine,_ for him. Just fine. More than. Good, they’re perfectly good, and for a long time he’d thought he’d never be with a woman, and that was fine, too. There are things Ben wants, and things Ben _needs_ , and once upon a time he’d thought that a female Alpha was maybe, on the odd day, the former.

And then. And then he’d met _her_ , and she’d torn apart the entire fucking _landscape_ of his wants and needs, and rebuilt it from scratch in shapes that he couldn’t even begin to understand, and—

_No_.

Fuck the past.

Ben finds a parking spot and pulls the handbrake. He’s going into heat in so little time that it’s probably best to count it in minutes now—and abs of steel will be there to take care of him, and Ben won’t think about _her_ , not even once.

_Sex_ , he tells himself as he finds out from the Beta receptionist what room Sandy Johnson got them booked into. _You’re about to get laid—and likely get laid well, by those life-altering abs, no less._ That should wipe his mind clean of all the hormonal reminiscing. 

When the elevator doors open on the fourth floor, his boxer briefs are drenched, and the grip on his duffle bag is not white-knuckle tight anymore, and—Ben Solo is simply not wired to do _happy_ , but he actually has a pretty good feeling about this.

(Which, in hindsight, is pretty fucking ironic, isn’t it?)

He smells her immediately after he swipes the room key—and well before he sees her. Contrary to popular Beta beliefs, Alphas and Omegas are not _dogs_. They don’t traipse around sniffing each other’s butts, or peeing on their territories, or memorizing scents. With the exception of family members and mates and very close friends, they cannot recognize each other in a crowd, or even in a small space, just based on their sense of smell. That would be ridiculous. 

But.

This.

_Hers._

Ben’s had—thoughts. Thoughts and a lot more, about this scent. It’s engraved in his brain and in his dick and maybe even in his stupid, _moronic_ little Omega heart, and—

No. 

Fuck, no.

He… He can’t be in heat near her. It’s not— _No_. He can’t. He’s not equipped to deal with her— _God, she’s so fucking beautiful_ —not on a regular day and not today of all damn days, and—

It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t even matter, because he’s getting out of here. He’s getting out of here before—

Her nostrils flare and suddenly she looks up from the chair she’s sitting in, calmly reading a book like she’s waiting for her teeth to be cleaned at the dentist or something equally mundane. Their gazes meet for—

Well. Too late, now.

Rey’s eyes widen, and her scent crests and takes over the entire room. 

“You.”


	3. Chapter 3

The first time he meets her, it’s in a bar Hux dragged him to, one of those places where Alpha finance bros meet after work to blow out some steam. The moment he smells her, the very millisecond the molecules of her hit Ben’s nose and bind to their chemical receptors, sleepy neurons being firing, and the ground shifts beneath his feet, and he knows that nothing, nothing will ever be as it was.

Her smell is so good, he is  _ stupefied _ . 

So much so that it takes him almost ten minutes to realize that she is yelling at him. Something about his mother crying and his father being sad and Ben being a disappointment for throwing away everything she’s ever wanted, but all Ben can think is—

_ You you you you, you are everything I’ve ever wanted, you you you— _

“Are you even listening to me?”

It takes a few seconds, but his vision focuses and his breathing settles and the fog of  _ lust and Alpha and bite bite bite me  _ that has overtaken his brain seems to thin a little. Just enough for Ben to realize two things. The first is that the woman who is snarling at him is a beautiful young Alpha, so ridiculously attractive that she could have been pulled straight out of one of Ben’s sex dreams. The second is that she is well on her way to becoming very, very drunk.

He shakes his head, trying to breathe through her scent and regain control of his brain. “Who are you?” It comes out more baffled than angry.

“I, unlike  _ you _ , am not a monster.”

Ben recoils. He is—what? Why? And—how the fuck does she smells so  _ edible _ ? “What?”

“Do you even know that last week your mother passed out and ended up in the hospital?”

He almost gasps, because—no, he had no idea. Han didn’t tell him, not that Ben and Han talk much, but it’s not as if he wouldn’t have wanted to know whether his mom—

“Did you know that Han had surgery six months ago?” Her cheeks and her mouth red, her eyes blazing with anger, and she is glorious in her rage, glorious in the way she repeatedly stabs Ben’s chest with her index finger as if to drill a hole through him. She is—oh, she is welcome to it. “No, you didn’t. You didn’t because you don’t care about you parents. They are amazing people who have done nothing but give you the world and you—”

“Okay, okay, that’s enough.”

The voice of the man who comes to collect the Alpha is tired, and annoyed, and somewhat familiar. Ben cannot place it until he manages to take a good look at his face—Poe Dameron. Poe Fucking Dameron. 

His mother’s right hand, and—

“Sorry, Solo.” He rolls his eyes and pulls the Alpha into himself, shushing her. She protests and tries to wriggle free, but—she must be even drunker than Ben initially thought. “I made the mistake of pointing out to Rey her that you were Leia’s son about three beers into the evening.” 

_ Rey _ . Her name is Rey. His Alpha’s name is Rey, and she—

“We’ll get out of you hair now. Sorry again, she’s usually not like this. Please don’t sue her.”

They go back to their table, and Ben stares at the Alpha’s slim back until it disappears in the crowd.

_ His Alpha’s name is Rey, and she hates him. _

...

The first time that she met Ben Solo, he was drunk and had shoved his father through a window.  _ Don’t judge him for that, kid, _ Han had said from the hospital where they’d given him some stitches on the back of his head. He’d been fine—just shaken.

But Rey couldn’t help it. She really could not help it. She  _ did _ judge him for it—and continued to, and would continue to, likely until the day she died.

Every time she met Ben Solo, she came away from the interaction wanting to strangle him—and she didn’t even think that was the Alpha in her. He was rude, he was condescending, he was aggressive, but most of all, he was a  _ dick _ to his parents.

Rey would have killed to have had parents like Ben’s. Han, who was gruff, but fond and always made her laugh even when he wasn’t trying to and who got this pleased look on his face whenever Rey smiled at him; and Leia, who was the best boss Rey had ever had, and with whom she’d had lovely, long, lazy rainy Friday afternoon conversations about being a female Alpha in a world that imposed the gender binary onto designation. Working at  _ The Leia and Han Organa Foundation _ was one of those things that decidedly changed her life for the better, and made her feel almost as though growing up a junk rat had been a fluke rather than the crushing, unavoidable destiny of systemic poverty that she had found herself unfortunately born into. 

Ben just stands there in the doorway, his mouth open in surprise, his pupils so dark because he’s so close to the start of his heat. He has dropped the duffle bag he’s brought with him in shock, and she can see a small wet dot seeping through the front of his pants. 

“This can’t be happening,” he blurts out first, which ordinarily would have made Rey want to curl up into an unwanted ball, but given that that’s pretty much how she’s feeling too, she’s glad to have the clarity that, at least, the feeling is mutual. “You said your name was  _ Sandy _ .”

“And you said yours was  _ Kylo _ ,” she snaps back. “What sort of name is that, even?”

He grinds his jaw angrily and his nostrils flare. She can see that he regrets that immediately because his cheeks get even redder and, yes, she notices the way that wet dot in the front of his pants is spreading.

She bites back a groan. That shouldn’t be as arousing as it is, knowing that he’s leaking at her scent, that inhaling the air of the room is making him wetter, making him hotter.

_ This can’t be happening,  _ she thinks again. She’d been looking  _ forward  _ to this, she’d gone and thrown her budget out of the window for this. And it’s  _ Ben Solo _ who is standing right there in the door—which is still open—staring at her and smelling like—

She’d be lying if she were to say she didn’t like the way he smells right now. Ok, she  _ loves _ the way he smells right now. She’d wear it as perfume if she could, bathe in it. He smells like heaven, he smells like perfection. Except that a little too mixed in with that mouth-watering scent there is an unmistakable pulsing terror.

And a voice in the corner of her mind, one that sounds so much like Finn, murmurs to her,  _ Calm him. Your Omega is scared you will leave him alone for this. _

She takes a deep breath, his terror and his heat filling her nose once again. “Are you coming in?” It comes out a little more aggressive, or maybe passive-aggressive, than calming. 

He doesn’t move. He doesn’t say anything. He just stares at her. He looks as though his brain has completely shut off. Which, to hear Rose’s rants about heats, is probably not far from the truth at all.

“Ben,” she says, and she is very proud of herself for managing not to eye-roll. “Please come in.”

He does, closing the door behind him at last, locking the smell of him into the room with them. The terror comes in much more strongly when he’s not standing on the threshold. “I’m not going to leave you to it,” Rey tells him quietly. “Unless—” She hates that she’s even going to voice it. She’d been really looking forward to this and there is a corner of her Alpha brain that is still chomping at the bit to push him onto the floor and mount him  _ now _ , “Unless you would rather I leave.”

To her complete and utter surprise, he starts to laugh. “Of course you’re not,” he says. “Of course you’re just going to sit there and be perfect, aren’t you? You don’t know how to be anything other than perfect.”

The words are complimentary, but the frantic tone of his voice throws her because it most certainly isn’t.  _ Well, he always has been intolerably rude,  _ she thinks angrily. Or she would think angrily, if every instinct in her body weren’t screaming at her to mount him, to comfort him, to hold him, to quieten and soothe him.

“What do you want?” she asks him quietly.

He swallows. She can practically feel his pulsing heart in the way that his scent fills her nose, wave after wave of desire, wave after wave of terror.  _ He is frightened,  _ she thinks.  _ That is why he is angry. He is frightened.  _ She wonders if that’s true of him when he’s not going into heat. It’s a thought that had never occurred to her before. She’ll table that for now, though, because this—this is more immediately important than that.

“Omega,” she tries when the silence stretches out a little too long. “Do you want me to stay?” she asks him again. She sounds almost stern when she says it and she sees his pupils go wide. 

“Do you  _ want _ to?” he demands. His voice is breathy. 

“I said I would stay if you wanted me to,” she tells him. “I’m not going to leave you to your heat on your own. I’ll take care of you, if you want me to.”

“But do you  _ want _ to?” he asks and it comes out as more of a whine. That spot on the front of his pants is now not so much a spot as a giant swathe of precum staining its way through the fabric. His cheeks are flushed, his eyes look almost feverish, almost wild, and she remembers what Finn had said, what  _ Kylo _ had requested when he’d told her his suppressants were probably strong enough to get through without a knot, but he’d want other usual heat stuff.

“Can you be good for me?” she asks him. “I’ll be good for you, I promise.”

And his eyes actually roll into the back of his head when she says it and his whole body starts to tremble and she gets to her feet. “You’re not alone, Ben,” she murmurs to him, holding out her hand.

And he actually looks like he’s going to cry with relief when he takes it. His palm is clammy and a little too hot, or maybe it’s just that the closer she gets to him, the more intensely aware she is of his scent because she feels a little too hot right now.

“How close are you?” she asks, taking his other hand too, and squeezing it. “You smell close.”

“Yeah I’m…” he manages. He swallows, closes his eyes.  _ Not so much with words,  _ Rey thinks. That’s probably for the best. She likes him best when he doesn’t talk. She can think of better uses for his mouth than talking right now—ones that will probably suit them both far more than continued conversation about how awkward this is.

“Off with these, then,” she tells him gently when he doesn’t keep talking, releasing his hands to tug his shirt out from his pants. God this is so weird this is so weird this is so weird. 

And it gets weirder when he tugs his shirt up over his head and Rey goes to the gym a lot, she has a good body, she’s seen guys—Alphas—with good bodies. And Omega guys, normally, they’re not so much with the muscles. 

But Ben’s as jacked as she’d always imagined he was. More so, really, because she’d always thought he was a six-pack kind of guy and that’s definitely an eight-pack stretching across his abdomen. She remembers his Rutter profile, the way his muscles had rippled around that mating gland on his back and she hums in satisfaction and reaches a hand out to trail her fingers along the crevices between his pecs.

He whimpers as he undoes his pants and kicks off his shoes and shoves them down his legs and he’s already hard because of course he is—he’s ready to fuck for the next three days and that will feel  _ very _ good inside her when she rides him. 

“On the bed,” she tells him, and she’s about to ask him how he wants it first, what will be best for him, but before she can, he’s clambering onto the bed on his hands and knees, his back to her, his  _ ass _ to her, slick and dripping. 

Rey doesn’t waste a second. She tugs her dress off, and her panties as well and bends down to rifle her way through her own duffle bag, tugging out the strap-on with its knot extension and fastening it around her hips. Then she turns and faces Ben on the bed again.

He’s watching her, even if his back is to her, and he’s got another dazed look on his face. But he doesn’t smell terrified anymore, so she takes that as a good sign. She focuses on that, rather than the fact that Leia and Han’s son is on his hands and knees on the bed in front of her, ass in the air and waiting for her to fuck him. No, she really doesn’t want to think about how there’d been a gleam of pride in Leia’s eyes when she’d asked for Friday and possibly Monday off because she’d matched and was going to be seeing an Omega through his heat. She really doesn’t want to think about that as she bends her face between his legs and buries her nose in his ass and the way he smells so goddamn perfect she can feel her clit thrumming between her legs just from the texture of his slick against her nose.

God she’s going to lose herself in this isn’t she, the way he tastes, the way her senses accept every part of him falling apart. The taste of him alone has her wanting nothing more than to fuck him into the mattress. 

And, what’s more, she knows she will. 

She lets out a contented hum, or maybe it’s a purr, or maybe it’s a growl, and runs a hand over his ass. He shivers, and she whispers, “You smell so good.” Good is the understatement of the year, it is an  _ insult _ to how he smells, but she hears his breath hitch all the same. “You’re going to be good, aren’t you?”

“Please,” Ben whimpers. “Please, just—please.”

She licks along the crevice of his ass because she  _ needs _ to taste him, needs to have his scent inside her  _ now _ or else she’ll be the one whining with need and he needs her control right now. It tastes better than anything she’s ever tasted in her life, better than anyone else she’s ever licked. He tastes the way he smells and it makes her eyes roll back into her head a little bit, especially when he bucks his hips backwards towards her tongue.  _ Needy,  _ she thinks. But she needs him too. She needs him to fall apart, to melt into the bed so that she can hold him close and mix her scent with his. So she straightens her back, lines the strap on up to his ass, and reaches a hand down under his hips to stroke along his dick. 

It is hot, and long, and it twitches in her hand and Ben makes a guttural sound, low in his throat as she moves her hand and presses into him.

She’s fucked people in the ass before—Beta exes who are curious about what it’s like to be with an Alpha and who think that an Alpha means anal sex because  _ obviously _ the only thing that matters about being an Alpha is penetration. (These exes had never been the ones who lasted very long.) With Betas, there’s always this sensation of pressure, of checking with every millimeter to make sure they’re ok, that they’re lubed up enough, that they aren’t hurting. Ben groans and rocks his hips back towards her until the strap-on is fully sheathed within him. There’s no resistance, his muscle doesn’t clench around the phallus the way that Betas’ do. His body welcomes her and she can’t help but feel a moment of awe as he spurts a little stream of precum onto the bed and groans again. He’s going to be loud, isn’t he? She finds that she likes that, likes knowing that he’ll be vocal about every little thing that he likes. 

“Are you alright, Omega?” she asks, running her hand once again over the curve of his ass. 

“Please,” he says again. So she grabs his hips as tightly as she can, pulls her hips back, and slams into him. “Oh fuck,” he blurts out, his head dropping forward onto the pillow. 

“That’s right,” she hears herself saying, crooning almost against the sound of the fronts of her thighs slapping against the backs of his. Is that really her own voice? It sounds so much more steady than she feels right now. Right now she feels like she’s almost at sea in the way the room smells of him right now. “That’s right. Good little Omega.”

There’s nothing little about him—hell, he’s bigger and taller than she is—but he doesn’t seem to care about that. In fact, the moment she says it he comes hard, semen pouring out of his dick as he chokes out a sob and collapses forward onto the bed. Rey fumbles with the extension on her strap on and pushes deep into him as the knot at the base expands. She bends down and presses a kiss to the middle of his back. “That’s right,” she repeats. “It’ll be alright. I’m here. I won’t leave you. You’re safe with me, Ben.” Each word she says as she eases him onto his side, curling him around the cum that’s pooling on the blankets underneath them, pressing herself against his back and wrapping her arms around him, holding him tight against her heart. 

_ Perfection. _

She feels his breathing steady, hears him swallow a few times, but he doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t have to. Soon enough, she knows, he’ll be whining and needy again, uncontrollable heat burning its way through his body until she’s made him come again.

_ Treat them well,  _ Leia had told her when she’d asked for that time off, and it had felt almost like the advice she would have passed on to her own child during his first shared heat—if he’d been an Alpha.  _ I will. I’ll treat him well. Even if he can’t stand me. Even if I can’t stand him. _

So she settles herself down, trying to rest a little bit before whatever Ben needs from her next, and she takes a deep breath.

Which she immediately regrets.

Because her nose is pressed right against Ben’s mating gland, and the scent it’s giving off right now is making her head spin so hard she feels like she’s about to come. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the lovely comments guys, we love you bunches 💕💕

He’s too dazed by what feels like the first real orgasm of his adult life to realize what is going on right away.

That is: where her mouth is, and what her lips are pressing against.

There is also the fact that Rey’s holding him like _that_ , like he’s _her Omega_ , arms coiling around his torso in a way that he’s seen actual couples do on TV. It’s not something Ben usually allows his Alphas, no matter how far gone he is during his heats, because—fuck that shit. If it’s written in his chromosomes that he has to be an Omega in heat a handful of times a year then he’ll be one, and he’ll lock himself in a room with a virtual stranger to beg to be fucked for three days in a row, and he’ll even reduce the sheets and the bed to a mess of slick come. But he does not need fucking _cuddles_ to go with it, thank you very much. 

This, though… he should find it patronizing or annoying, the way Rey’s wrapped around him like she wants to keep him warm or defend him from the outside world or… treasure him for herself. Or some equally Alpha bullshit. Ben should hate this, especially because this is Rey, and she has made clear plenty of times how much she despises him. 

_You are a—a…. You’re a monster. You should be ashamed of yourself._

And yet. Here he is. Burrowing inside her smell. Letting his mind go soft and blank as he feels her heartbeat flutter against his ribcage. Drifting off as he tries to recover from the pleasure that just coalesced inside him, and the sane part of him knows it, that this is the worst fucking idea he’s ever had in his life. 

A heat with Rey Johnson. 

The fact remains that he’s dazed with what she just gave him, and that’s why it doesn’t immediately register, that her mouth is hovering above his gland. And then she sighs, and her breath tickles his skin in a very telling pattern, and—

Ben comes again. 

Harder. 

He _whines_ , and for a fraction of a second tries to get a grip on himself, because this is a little embarrassing, but then her mouth presses against him, _there_ , and she is technically still fucking him, which means that his hole has something to clench against and Ben has exactly _zero_ hope of not—

Sound recedes. The core of him seems to spin a bit, to shift and readjust. Ben’s vision blurs, so he closes his eyes and there are spots of white light dancing behind his lids. He is coming again, first rubbing himself against the sheets in search of friction and then even _harder_ , with his Alpha’s hand tight around his cock. A delicious, reassuring pressure that makes it go on and on and _on_.

Ben’s not exactly sure what happens after that.

When he resurfaces, blinking sleepily, he is lying on his back, and whatever cloud was covering the sun a few minutes earlier is gone. His heart, which felt about to explode in his chest in the middle of his orgasms, is now beating leisurely.

It happens to him, during heats, to pass out from the pleasure. Every once in a while. Rarely. Not in a long time, and never in the first day, let alone the first hour, and it’s getting more and more obvious that _this_ , saying yes to her, taking her hand… it was all a terrible idea. 

Someone— _Alpha, Alpha, you’re still here_ —is gently caressing the hair away from his forehead.

“Are you okay?”

He has always had a thing for her accent. Not for British accents per se—he had grown up with the BBC as constant background, courtesy of Leia and her having to keep abreast of every single shitty thing happening in the world—but Rey’s long _a_ s, and the omnipresent _h_ s, the way her tongue curls darkly when words contain _l_ s… They always seemed to stick in his ears, long after whatever argument they’d just had. There is no urgency in her voice now. Her smell is so thick around him, so _perfect_ , Ben can’t help but feel calm for the first time in years, and he doesn’t bother answering her.

Her fingers are pleasantly cool on his skin, the pressure just enough. It makes Ben want to die in this moment, how sweet it is. Somewhere deep inside, it also makes him want to flip a table.

“Have I pleased you, Omega?”

It’s—

Such a stupid question. Such a Rey Johnson question. Such a fucking _perfect_ _Alpha_ kind of question. Not just because he _is_ the Omega, he _is_ meant to please and not vice versa, but also because… She only has to look around. He has made a mess of the bed already, and his heat began maybe half an hour ago. And yet it’s there, hidden in her words and in her tone, that if he needed more from her she’d be doing it.

It occurs to Ben what she said in their exchange, about having never seen an Omega through a heat before. It makes him hope that maybe she really doesn’t know, how remarkable this is. Maybe he can hide it from her, the power she yields over him.

He finally looks up at her. She has disposed of whatever she used to fuck him stupid, and is completely naked now, kneeling on the bed next to him. A mess of freckles and lean muscles and shallow swells, from the soft curve of her smile and the wiry slope of her bicep to her mouth-watering breasts. It should feel strange to him, how small she is. Not really _small_ , but female Alphas—they can usually be spotted from miles away. Their inseam is almost as long as Ben’s, they tend to look like they could bench press his weight, and there is very little softness in them. They are always beautiful, in a strong, overwhelming way.

Rey, though. Rey is almost a foot shorter than he is, weighs half as much, and yet…

And yet, whenever he’s found himself in her company, it was always there. Clear between them, how easily she could have taken charge of him. How much Ben wanted her to. 

“Are you okay?” she repeats, this time with that weight behind it—the one Alphas use when they want something done. It’s subtle in her case, a gentle nudge to the crass shove most of her kind usually prefer. It makes it that much harder to resist.

“Yes,” he answers, helpless not to. But, because this is Rey and her existence has been tormenting him for years, he also adds: “Why the fuck would _you_ care?” He tries to master some defiance, to make it hurtful, but it’s hard when she’s just made him come until his eyes crossed. His voice should be cutting, but it mostly sounds breathless and gravely.

Rey frowns.

“Because I do. I said I would see you through this. I want to do it well.”

He can’t bear the look in her eyes, so he turns to the window. It’s not much of a view, mainly the rooftop of the nearest building and the partly cloudy sky. And yet. It’s going to be all he can see for the next three days.

Concrete, a wedge of pale blue sky, and Rey Johnson as she fucks every ounce of sanity out of him and wrecks him for the rest of his life.

“This is a terrible idea.”

She cocks her head. “What is?”

“Spending this heat together.”

Rey stiffens. “Maybe.” She continues to pet him. First his hair, and then her fingers slide down to his collarbone and pecs, tracing shapes he cannot make out. He wishes he had the strength to swat her hand away—but it’s not happening anytime soon. 

“I don’t understand why you’re here.”

Her fingers halt. And then resume.

“To do more of what I just did.” Her voice is soft, but it sends a shiver down his spine.

_More than what she just did._

“You must be really desperate. To want to do this with me.” 

A long silence, and more caresses. Ben can’t remember the last time anything felt this… pleasant. Nice. Good.

“Is that why _you_ decided to stay? Because you’re desperate?”

“I am an unmated Omega. In heat.” Bitterness seeps through the quiet of his voice. Desperate is all he is. Desperate is his _life_ , the passing of the years marked by heats he cannot avoid or control. Now, in the new, extremely dangerous Rey Johnson edition.

“I don’t mean to take advantage of that. Or to force you into anything you don’t want.”

And she isn’t. The truth is, Ben still could have backed away. He could have left. _You smell close_ , she’d said, and he was close, very close, but still he could have walked out of this room. Not walked in at all. Gone back to his car, his apartment. The inferior Alpha neighbor.

But there Rey was, warm, welcoming, smelling—smelling even better than she had before, and Ben just couldn’t make himself…

“You aren’t.”

“Mm?”

“You aren’t forcing me.”

He opens his eyes to look up at her— _beautiful, so beautiful_ —and he didn’t expect her to be chewing on her bottom lip. “I know this is not ideal. But if you don’t want this I can help you get home. I can help you—” She swallows visibly. “I can help you find someone else and—”

“ _No._ ” Not—not someone else. The idea of someone else, after knowing how she can... “I… this is fine.” _Fine_.

Rey nods, and _her goddamn scent._

“You smell good,” he tells her, unable to stop himself. “You smell like you…”

He has no choice but to move closer to her, turning to his side until his face is in her lap. She welcomes him immediately, her hand carding in his hair and drawing his head to her abdomen, holding him gently to herself. He lets his nose dig into her navel, her skin, burrow into the molecules of her. No one should be allowed to smell like this. This is—beyond everything. Beyond what Ben can stand, certainly.

The Omega inside of him, the one that was addled by the pleasure until a few seconds ago, awakens at once to find that his Alpha also smells… turned on. She smells wet and excited, like she wants Ben. She smells like a banquet, and Ben realizes that—

_You have come, you have had your pleasure and your Alpha hasn’t. She smells unsatisfied, she smells horny, and you are here, and you aren’t—you haven’t—_

This is _intolerable_. 

“What do you want, Alpha?”

Rey’s hands are so gentle and kind—so unlike the things she has said about him, _to_ him over the years. 

“Sssh. I’m here. I just want to see you through this heat.”

He opens his mouth to trace her tummy with his lips. Her skin—it’s like it’s dipped in pheromones, because suddenly he needs to be closer, he needs her closer, he needs to burrow inside her and make room for himself, he needs to— 

She must smell it on him. “Sssh. Ben. It’s okay. ” 

He whimpers, a miserable, pathetic sound.

“I’m here. It will be fine.”

Ben doesn’t know that. He feels hollow, raw and empty inside and scorched across his skin, and maybe this horrible feeling will just last forever and this will be him forever, and—

“I know what you need, Omega.”

The firmness in her voice is enough to calm him down. The bed dips when she shifts her balance, and then it dips even more when she goes on her knees to straddle his shoulders, and—

Ben moans, because—Jesus fucking Christ. Rey Johnson’s cunt on his face is the best thing that has ever happened to him. Bar none. 

“Do you know what to do, Ben?” 

_No._

Her scent is delicious and soothing and the embodiment of everything Ben has ever wanted to be fucked by, but he is a horrible Omega and has no idea what to do. In the past Alphas have asked, demanded, ordered, urged, begged, even silently put a hand on the back of his head and guided him until he sucked their cocks, and Ben was always happy to oblige, but the knowledge doesn’t seem transferable, and even if it were Rey’s scent is currently frying his brain. 

Mortified, he shakes his head. And then he breathes in—and immediately lets out a whine, because this is just too much. He could choke on the air around him and still not pull enough of her inside his lungs.

“It’s okay.” Rey smiles down at him, calm and reassuring, but her cheekbones are dusted with red. “Follow my lead.”

She tastes like butter. No, she _feels_ like melted butter on his tongue, and tastes the way she smells and he could drown in her, easily, happily. He should—vaguely, Ben thinks there probably is a trick to this, some art he should master—he might have never done this, but he’s not stupid, he knows what a clit is, that it’s sensitive and delicate and—

It doesn’t matter.

Because Rey— _his Alpha, Rey Johnson is his Alpha, and therefore Ben’s purpose in life is to please her_ —straddles his face and runs her thumb over his cheek, back and forth. Then gently angles his head just so, until he… He closes his lips on her and _sucks_ , and he must be getting it just right, because her breath catches. 

“Ah. Ben.” Her voice has a breathy quality that makes his cock leak and his hole clench. He immediately wants to lick her more. Harder. “There.”

Fuck Rey Johnson, because of course, of course she has to be a good Alpha, the good Alpha he’s always needed, the good Alpha everyone wanted Ben to be and he’ll never be. Of- _fucking_ -course, her sitting on his face has to feel like some kind of universe-redefining religious experience.

“Ben, you’re such a good Omega,” she tells him calmly, and—

She doesn’t get to say that. She doesn’t get to tell him that he’s the worst person she’s ever met, and then, months later, while he’s drowning in her taste— _how can she taste so good it’s not possible it’s not_ —tell him that he’s a good Omega. And Ben, he doesn’t get to _enjoy_ it.

If enjoy is even the right word for what is going on here.

Her labia—she is completely bare there, and he can see every tiny detail. He wants, needs to touch himself, but it feels— _wrong_ , it feels like it’s not his place, like he hasn’t earned it, and so he just…

He whimpers, grinding his mating gland into the mattress. “ _Please_.” He’s not even sure what he’s asking for. The bed is a soaked already, with his slick and pre-cum, so probably it’s _Please, more._ Or, _Please, fuck me. Please, let me fuck you. Please, use me._ So many possibilities, sweet with the taste of her flooding the back of his mouth. 

Rey reaches back behind her, blindly, arm extended, and—his torso is too long, and she only barely manages to graze the tip of his cock, but it’s enough. Ben grunts and he’s coming again, making a complete mess of his chest this time, his orgasm pouring through him like a waterfall, his gland throbbing with pleasure. He is so lost to it that it takes him long moments to realize that his Alpha is coming, too, silent gasps spaced with tiny moans that make Ben feel like he’s just reached the top of the highest mountain.

This is good. 

Perfect. Scarily so.

He must lose track of himself for a moment, because the next thing he knows is that Rey has slid down is body, her cunt hot and wet against his abs. She is cupping his head in her small hands like he’s something precious and fragile, and she is… 

Kissing him.

They are kissing, in a way that manages to be both tender and sweet and to involve their teeth and tongues and lips— _they are like teenagers making out_ —and Ben shouldn’t read much into— _this is a heat kissing is the least of what will happen_ —but it keeps the high of his orgasm going, and his cock stays hard and his gland is _on fire_ and he thinks maybe, maybe she will _really_ take care of him and this will turn out fine and—

Ben startles at the sudden sound—the text ringtone on an iPhone. Rey ignores it and continues kissing him—deeper, a little deeper—but the first text is followed by a second, and a third, and a fourth, and—

Ben’s hands tighten around her waist for a second, and then fall to his side as Rey lifts herself up with a sigh and moves to the table where she left her purse.

Her naked body is…

Ben has to swallow, and tell himself not to stare.

“I’m sorry.” Her breathing is a little too fast. “It’s just… I forgot to turn off my work phone.”

Ben freezes, first; and then he almost snorts. _Work_. 

“I bet my parents are going to be happy about this.” His voice is rough and scratchy, but there is no way Rey can’t hear the sarcasm. 

Why she looks so… so hurt and surprised, as she turns off the phone and glances up at him, he has no clue. “I would assume that they would be. Knowing that their Omega son is with an Alpha they could trust.”

He actually snorts, this time. Loudly.

Rey visibly stiffens. “ _You_ might think that I’m inadequate as an Alpha, but your parents have never given the faintest indication that they believe I’m not fit for—”

“Oh, I’m sure they think the world of _you_.” Ben looks out of the window, trying to avoid seeing the way Rey is frowning right now—because she’s his Alpha and shouldn’t be frowning to begin with, because she’s Rey, because he’d rather undergo prolonged dental reconstruction than talk about _this,_ with _her_.

“Then what did you mean by—”

“It’s a reminder that their son is an Omega, and they can’t possibly be happy about.”

“What are you talking about?” Ben can hear the displeasure in her voice, and it stabs at him, that he’s making his Alpha upset during his heat. 

He forces himself to shut up.

The mattress dips under Rey’s weight. “You really don’t know your parents at all.”

“My parents kicked me out of their lives three days after I presented.”

A pause. Rey’s hand wraps around his knees, and—it’s reassuring, in a way, to know that the hormones are working on both sides. That she can’t stand to be away from him any more that he can keep from wanting her. “That’s is a lie.”

“It’s not.” 

“Your parents are the most supportive—”

Ben’s head whips around. “After I presented, my parents never made eye contact again and sent me to finish school to the other side of the country. _So_.” 

Rey’s hand stops on the fleshy part of his lower leg. He wants to touch her, too. He _wants_ so much from her. He _needs_.

“I don’t believe you.”

Well. That’s surprising. 

“Of course.” His tone is bitter. “I know you hate me, Rey. You don’t have to pretend.”

She rolls her eyes, but it seems a little forced. A little hesitant. “I don’t hate you. You are so overdramatic all the time.” Her hand is moving again. Drawing patterns in the slick coating his inner thigh. Ben has to suppress a shiver.

“You act like you do.”

“I don’t—”

“Yes, you do.”

Rey must agree, because she flushes and bites into her lower lip. Her nostrils flare, and Ben knows that she can smell it, his distress at the thought of having displeased her. Or maybe it’s just that he is hard, leaking, that colors his scent.

“Shh. Omega.”

Rey leans forward and— _fuck_. She licks him, a long stripe that starts from his sac and continues up and up, stopping to swirl around the head of his cock.

Ben gasps, because— _shit._

“Maybe I hate you.” He can feel her breath on his skin, right before she closes her lips around him. His brain—it’s starting to flood with pleasure and to shut down on him. “Or maybe I thought I did, while in truth I always wanted to fuck you.”

She slides two fingers deep inside him, and curves them right— _there_.

_Fuck._

Ben arches off the bed, and forgets about everything.


	5. Chapter 5

It’s after that third conversation that she decides the best way to handle this situation—the next few days—is to keep him from talking. When he’s not talking, she can pretend this is just some sort of sexual fantasy, a dream come true, rather than a nightmare in guise of a dream.

_ You must be really desperate. To want to do this with me. _

Maybe he hadn’t known how deep it would hit. He’d certainly looked uncomfortable when she hadn’t known how to respond, and she hadn’t known how to respond because—wasn’t that why she had never deleted Rutter? Why she’d kept on swiping and swiping and swiping and swiping, hoping for something that would never happen, just like her parents coming back?

And  _ then _ he’d gone and said what he’d said about his parents, and Rey had felt something in her just stop. She couldn’t let herself care, that would only end in misery and disaster, and if Ben talked, he’d manage to hit her where it hurts because that’s what he’d always done—hit her where it hurts. Without even needing to try.

So she fucks him senseless and whenever he looks like he’s going to talk again she finds a way to break his concentration. She tries each of the toys she’s brought him, and decides to focus on the way he reacts to each of them, rather than the way her head is spinning. 

Clearly he likes being fucked with the strap-on. She does that again several more times, pulling him onto his hands and knees and gripping his hips while he moans and grinds back behind her until cum is streaming out of his dick onto the complete mess that is their bed. Under any other circumstances, Rey would be horrified— _ horrified _ —by the mess of it all, but every time he comes, every time more slick flows out of his ass, every time she catches a whiff of the scent of that gland on his back, she sinks more and more into it, loses herself in the  _ Omega  _ of it all, that makes her feel like she is coming home, like this is who she is supposed to be, like this is right.

Dangerous thoughts to be having with Ben, but he’d been right about that at least: this was a bad idea. Even if she clearly was an inferior Alpha.

That’s the thought that makes her pull out the the anal beads and fill him with them before sucking him off and pulling them out, one right after the other as he comes so hard he faints again, his face flushed, his lips parted and he looks so beautiful like that—when his face isn’t tense and he looks completely satiated. She licks his cum off his stomach and chest while he is unconscious, and for the rest of her life she’ll never forget how he tastes, will never forget how his taste makes her feel. 

_ Take care of him. _

_ He hasn’t been taken care of. _

There’s this running list she’d had—of things she was planning to ask Leia about when she got back to work on Tuesday. 

Is it normal not to come as much as the Omega? She knows that male Alphas come frequently—very frequently—during a heat because penetration does that, and that’s why everyone thinks of Alpha sex penetration. Ben had seemed thoroughly overjoyed to lick her cunt until she came, and his tongue on her was unpracticed but the scent of his joy at it— _ joy _ , she had been bewildered by—had more than made up for that. 

Is it normal to completely lose yourself during it? The only benefit of when she’d let Ben talk was that his words had brought her back to herself, had lifted her right out of his heavenly scent, had doused her with the metaphorical bucket of cold water. 

_ Did you really not look at your son after he presented? _

The thought of it makes her want to cry. 

Leia and Han—they’re so supportive. Their Foundation’s mission is supporting Alphas and Omegas in need. And their son—their son…

Their son who makes little noises in his sleep, who tosses and turns despite being satiated and who—unconsciously—buries his face between her breasts, his lips mouthing at her as she weaves her fingers through his hair.

_ You’re a liar,  _ she wants to think at him.

Except part of what she’d always hated about him was his habit of speaking the sort of uncomfortable truths that shatter Rey’s carefully crafted existence.

This one, though—this one was harder to stomach than all the rest.

When he’d first come through the door, angry and frightened, angry because he was frightened—

Is he frightened of his parents? Is that why they make him angry?

Is he frightened of  _ her _ , because she can be what he never can?

She presses a kiss to his hair, closing her eyes and holding her face there, breathing in a different scent, the scent he gives off when he’s not in heat, the one she’d convinced herself that she hated, but isn’t sure that that can be it anymore, given how wet she is, given how wet  _ he _ is, leaking onto the bed the way he is, even while he’s unconscious.

_ He’s never been cared for. How can they not have cared for him? _

Or maybe he’d never let them care for him. Maybe it was the same way he is with her right now—saying angry things that hurt her, rather than let her just try to be gentle with him. Maybe he doesn’t want gentle.

Maybe he doesn’t think he deserves gentle.

He had lashed out after she’d kissed him.

She hadn’t meant to kiss him. She hadn’t, it had just happened because she’s drowning in the scent of him, this need in her gut to consume him, to take him inside her and hold him there until—until what?

He stirs in her arms, a whine making its way out of his throat, and his eyes flutter open, and she sees pain there.

Rey springs into action. “I’m here,” she tells him, and she pushes him onto his back before scrambling to the edge of the bed and digging out the last toy she hadn’t managed to use the day before. 

The plug is huge. Intimidatingly so. Rey had been physically terrified when she’d unpacked it the other day. But Ben’s ass is gaping and wet and she doesn’t know if she’ll ever be over how readily he accepts everything she puts in him, how easy it is, how he moans, and pushes his hip towards the terrifyingly huge plug until it is buried inside him and he hisses out a sigh. 

Then Rey climbs on top of him, straddling his hips, her slit rubbing along his cock. He whimpers at the contact, and it’s all Rey can do not to whimper too, because every part of her is telling her to take him inside her— _ now _ —and there’s nothing stopping her from doing it, nothing at all. And why shouldn’t she? She’s had vaginal sex before and the whole reason she’s here is to have sex with Ben until the heat burns out. She’s sucked him off and drunk him down and kissed him so why not this too?

His eyes are on her as he whimpers, but they flutter closed when she lifts her hips and grabs his dick and guides him into her, huge and thick and hot.

And he’s coming again. He comes so easily, he’d come without her even touching him the day before, she’d just been cuddled up behind him, trying not to come herself because of how fucking good his gland smelled, and he’d just started coming. But he’s flooding her now, and moaning, and writhing on the bed beneath her while he spurts and spurts and spurts inside her, and it distracts her from the fact that she can’t remember the last time she felt this full, doesn’t think she’s ever felt this full.

He’s whining again now, and not writhing, and Rey freezes, only suddenly aware that she’d been rocking her hips against him. “Too much?” she asks him. He’s not ejaculating anymore, he might need a break already. Just because he’s in heat doesn’t mean he might not get oversensitized after coming.

He stares up at her. “More,” he says. “Please, Alpha.” And he jerks his hips up to meet hers and Rey leans forward and rests her arms on either side of his face, and closes her eyes, and loses herself.

It’s all too easy to lose herself to this—to the noises he’s making, to the heat of his skin as it brushes against hers, to the delicious slide of his cock inside her as he fills and voids her, to his scent—his scent most of all. Nothing in the world matters apart from his scent, apart from their scents, mixed, that she can smell from between her legs, how they fit together, how he fits in her.

She hears a choked moaning sound that it takes her a moment to realize is coming from her, and not Ben. He’s definitely making noises too, and he’s writhing again underneath her, but it sounds almost like he’s going to cry and not like—

Not like he already is.

That’s not sweat on her face, those are tears. She’s crying right now. Why is she crying? This feels too good to cry, too right to cry. This isn’t upsetting. This isn’t overstimulating. This is—this is—

But Ben has noticed that she’s crying now, and she smells concern spiking in him.

“It’s fine,” she gulps out. “It’s fine, you’re fine. You’re wonderful.”

Because he is. Somehow, inexplicably, Ben Solo is wonderful—the most wonderful person she’s ever been with, and she’s crying now. She’s crying and he’s coming again from the praise and the heat of his cum inside her, spilling out of her because he doesn’t have a knot to lock it in place, just buckets and buckets and buckets of cum and slick that they have been rolling around in for the past day and when had this bed started to smell like the home she’d never had? With Ben Solo?

He’s coming down from his orgasm and she can feel his dick starting to go limp, and she isn’t ready for that, she’s not done, she wants to come, to feel some sort of release. Ben’s got this blissed out dazed look on his face but he’s not lost in his orgasm, he’s watching her as she keeps on trying to rock against nothingness.

“Alpha,” he whispers and his hand slides down between her legs and she pauses. She lets him pull himself out of her and then feels him slide two fingers inside her. 

“Another,” she tells him, because two fingers—and admittedly, he has very large fingers—is not the same as how full she’d felt from his cock just moments before. He obliges quickly and begins pumping his hand towards her and she sits up and stares down at him, at his chest, at the flush that’s blotching its way across his abdomen, at his chapped lips, at his eyes, so dark and so bright all at once.

Her own fingers find her clit and she starts to rub as she stares down at him, and Ben licks his lips as he stares up at her and her mind doesn’t go blank, it can’t go blank because it fills with the thought of him licking the taste of them both out of her cunt, of him holding her in his hands right now because she needs to come and fucking biology is the worst except that without fucking biology she wouldn’t feel at home in his touch and god—Omega— _ Ben _ —

She falls forward when she’s done coming, letting herself rest on top of him. His fingers are still inside her, but he doesn’t seem as though he wants to move them particularly. Her heart is still racing, her cunt is still throbbing, and the room just smells so goddamn good.

Ben just smells so goddamn good.

Ben, whose parents hadn’t looked at him, or touched him, after he’d presented.

“Is it true?” she asks him because she can’t help it. She’s trying not to let him talk, but she’d started crying and she hadn’t known why and if she’s learned anything from her friendship with Finn it’s that when she starts crying and doesn’t know why, she’s avoiding something that’s hurting her a little too much.

And Rey’s done with that bullshit.

“Is what true?” he asks her. 

“What you said yesterday.”

He doesn’t respond right away, and she’s supposed to be taking care of  _ him _ , not the other way around, but his arms tighten around her and he’s nuzzling at her hair and she realizes she’s crying again.

“I don’t think you’re desperate,” he pleads. “Rey, please don’t cry. I don’t think you’re—”

That wasn’t what she’d meant but it makes her heart swell in her chest, makes it all click into place that much more clearly—that he had been lashing out, that he’d been scared, that he’s scared now, that he’s not used to being taken care of.

Because his parents had pushed him away.

So she cuts him off with a kiss. It’s an awkward kiss. Her torso is smaller than his and her hips are in line with his so she drags herself off his fingers and up his chest so that she’s kissing him again, deeply, her tongue sweeping into his mouth, tasting him, knowing him, holding him.

And he’s holding her. 

_ He doesn’t like me distressed like this,  _ she thinks. 

_ Of course not,  _ she rebuts.  _ You’re his Alpha and he’s in heat, and you’re supposed to be keeping him safe, not crying over his chest because his parents failed him. _

_ Because his parents failed. _

_ Because all parents fail. _

Except that she hadn’t smelled any kind of panic just now when he’d wrapped his arms around her. She hadn’t smelled fear, hadn’t smelled disgust, hadn’t smelled any of the smells she’d gotten when he’d first walked through the door yesterday to find her waiting for him.

No, she’d smelled something totally different. Smells something totally different. Because he still smells this way.

He smells like Leia when she’s trying to comfort Rey, fiercely protective, and more than a little bit loving.


	6. Chapter 6

He’s not certain what has changed, but there is a shift in quality in the way she touches him. In the way she holds him tight to herself, in the way she licks his glands to quiet him down and coat him in her own scent. Rey has been the perfect Alpha since the very second he entered this hotel room, but now and for the past few hours, ever since those tears that for some inexplicable reason seemed to have everything to do with him, she has been like a dream made flesh. Soothing and enveloping and protective. Anticipating his every need.

“Drink this. Just a sip.”

Ben opens his mouth to say that no, thank you, he doesn’t want to drink, could she please fuck him into the mattress instead? In the process he realizes how dry his throat has gone. The Gatorade trickling past his lips is like a balm. 

_Thank you Alpha._ _You were right._

“Are you hungry? Do you usually eat during your heats?”

He shakes his head and she smiles, her fingers combing lightly through his hair, smoothing the sweaty wisps around his ears. Weeks, months after he and Rey will get out of this hotel room and say goodbye, well after she’ll have moved on with her life, Ben’s body—his useless, treacherous, stubborn Omega body—will cycle into another heat, and Ben will have to let somebody else see him through it. It will probably be a male Alpha—because he won’t be able to get his mind off of _her_ anyway, and he expects that female Alphas will just elicit a slow, dull pain of it not being her—and Ben will have to force himself to endure his touch, knowing what he has had, but will never have again. He will go through with it, because that is an Omega’s lot in life, but every second will feel like a mistake. No fingers will be as cool and soothing as hers, no smell will be half as sweet, and no one will make his cock this hard.

“Can I ask you a question?” She asks it softly, and dimly he is aware that it sounds like she’s forcing herself to.

He exhales slowly. “Is it necessary?”

“What?”

“Questions. Talking. Is it necessary?”

“Ben…”

“It just doesn’t seem like we’re good at that.” 

Rey sighs, but it feels a little as if she’s conceding the point. “No, it’s not necessary.” Her fingers keep combing softly through his hair. “It’s not, but I’d like to.”

“I’d like to fuck.” He has to force himself to say it—not because it’s not true, but because he knows it’ll make her flinch. He’s not sure why he cares about her reactions, anyway. It’s not as if he should. It must be the heat messing with his head. 

She stares at him for a moment, and then nods. “Okay, then.” Her abs shift as she straightens, and Ben feels it deep inside his balls, how beautiful she is. How perfect. Until a few moments ago his heat was giving him a moment of respite, but just the sight of her is enough to pull him back under. His beautiful, powerful Alpha. She is strong and fit and able, and she will slay and fight for him, she will take care of him better than anyone else ever could—

”I’ll make you a deal.”

Ben gasps. And he almost chokes on the air that rushes out of his lungs, because there is nothing else he can do—not when Rey is turning around and sheathing herself around his cock in one fluid movement, her head facing his feet and her ass coming to rest on his abdomen. Knees on each side of his hips, she leans forward and braces her hands on his thighs. He can see her pink cunt. He can _feel_ it, tight and wet and strong, drawing him closer to that precipice he’s always dangling from during heat. Ben hears himself whimper at the sight of her perfect round cheeks against his skin.

They are tanned and smooth. They have freckles. He wants to touch them, but it’s as though his body cannot answer his commands at the moment. So he just moans and grunts and pleads.

“I’ll make you a deal,” she repeats, and starts moving up and down his cock, slow but steady. The play of her hair down her shoulder blades has his fist clenching in the sheets. “I _will_ fuck you.”

Ben _whines_. 

“My beautiful Omega. I will fuck you. If you answer my questions.” How is it that she can sound both so confident and so nervous?

“ _Rey_.”

“Not a lot of them.” The rise and fall of her hips, supple and effortless—he could pray to that. He would. “Just a few. But it’s— _oh_ —important.”

“Rey,” he repeats, and he can’t help himself. His hands slide from the sheets to her ass, and then from there to her waist, a grip that is surely too tight. She doesn’t complain. Just keeps on moving up and down, graceful and elegant.

“You are my Omega. For now. And I want to take care of you.” Her voice is breathy, like it’s hard for her, too, to focus. Though she’s certainly doing better than Ben is. “But I need to know things, to do it well.” One of her hands leaves his thigh and dips between his legs. It makes pleasure explode down his nerve endings as it traces the base of his cock, his balls, his asshole. He is seeping slick again, or maybe he never stopped. 

“Just—Alpha, please, just keep doing this and I—”

Her hips halt. And so do her fingers, right at the rim of his hole.

Ben groans, an animal sound that scares him, but that somehow doesn’t seem to bother Rey at all.

“Shh,” she croons. Her cunt squeezes around him, tight and enveloping, _reassuring_ , but—it’s not enough friction, not without any movement. She can’t leave him like this. “You are fine. You’ll be fine.” He wishes he could see her face. He wishes he could look at his Alpha’s eyes to understand, instead of having to make do with her back and her ass. This position—the pleasure of it, it feels like punishment. She is too far away from him. 

“Rey, please—”

“Is it true, what you said? About your parents?”

There is no way he can talk about his parents right now. No way. He tries to buck up and rock inside her, but she is Alpha strong and her hips pin him to the mattress.

“Is that why you… Are you scared of them, Ben? Of the fact that they’re Alphas? Of the way they see you?”

She smells so amazing right now. Right as she says these impossible, horrible things, she smells so spectacular and soothing and reassuring, Ben is afraid he is going to burst. He is afraid he is going to shatter.

“Because if that’s what it is…” He must smell desperate, too. She must be taking pity on him, because her hips stay still, but her fingers finally move and push knuckle deep inside him, and while he’s not coming yet, it feels just as good as if he were. 

“I want you to know that you’re safe with me.” 

Oh, fuck. Fuck, fuck, _fuck_. 

“I will never hurt you.” 

He winces at her words, and she must feel it, because her spine stiffens. 

“I know that I have, already. Before. But I won’t anymore, not intentionally.” Her fingers move inside him. Beautiful, little pumps that drive him insane. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. But I will take care of you, from now on.” The muscles in her back are tense, knotted and taut, and Ben—Ben would give ten years of his life to be able to see her face right now.

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” he snarls. His hands tighten even more around her waist, and—maybe he’s bruising her, or maybe it’s entirely her concession, but she begins to move up and down his cock again, the drag of her muscles pure heaven on his heated body.

“I won’t. I’m not.” She circles her hips against his own, and they both groan. 

“Just—Rey. Alpha. I just need… Just until this heat is over, and then we can…”

She shakes her head, and her hair fans around her shoulders, shining and sticking to her sweaty skin.

“No, Ben. Not until you believe me, when I tell you that I could never see you as anything but the most perfect Omega, and that I—”

He blacks out a little. Not quite completely, but as the pleasure rushes through him his awareness recedes and his vision goes white. His limits become a blur for a moment: he is not sure where he ends and where his Alpha begins, and the borders of his orgasm blend with her body as he clenches and releases. It’s nice, the emptying of his mind, the way the Omega in his seems to bridge and reach out to her to find some kind of completeness. But it doesn’t last for long. When he’s inside himself again Rey has moved right beside him, her eyes once more wet and shiny. Her lips are beestung and puffy, as if the whole time she was giving him her back she did nothing but bite into them. 

“You are perfect,” she is telling him, her breathing not quite under control. “You are perfect Omega, and I know there is no way I could be the Alpha you need, but if you—”

He is not aware of what he’s doing until he finds himself on top of Rey, his hands bracketing her head and his face less than an inch from his own. Her body fits perfectly underneath him, like a lock through a key, and in the moment of cooling clarity that follows his orgasm her words finally penetrate into his brain.

_There is no way I could be the Alpha you need._

It’s like being slapped. His entire self rejecting that notion. 

“Maybe you’re right,” he says slowly. “Maybe you and I should talk.”


	7. Chapter 7

He’s all she can see, his long face, his deep dark eyes just inches from her face. She doesn’t know what time it is. It doesn’t really matter. They are illuminated lightly from the hotel’s bedside lamps. He is glowing above her.

Glowing and glowering. 

“What?” she asks slowly. She doesn’t like the glower, the lines of his face, the brutal anger on his face as he hovers above him. Yes, she’d fucked his head clear moments ago, but she’s fairly certain that she’s not supposed to make her Omega—

_ He’s not mine though. _

_ This is just a weekend. _

It’s not whatever the Rutter marketing team said. He’s not hers. He’s not—

And his lips are moving along her cheekbones, ghosting over the beginnings of her tears as they leak out of the corners of her eyes. 

“Stop crying,” he tells her. 

“I’m not—”

“You are crying. You keep crying. Stop it.”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll just stop feeling everything,” she flares, trying to push him off her but for the first time since she’d arrived in this hotel room, he doesn’t budge and the fact that he’s six-three and jacked thrusts itself into her awareness. 

“I’m not asking you to not feel anything,” he retorts. It’s strange being pinned down. No one’s ever pinned her down and certainly not an Omega.  _ Certainly _ not an Omega in heat. Maybe his heat is wearing off. She sniffs tentatively. She couldn’t even begin to tell, given the state of the bed around them. “Just to stop crying. Stop thinking whatever’s making you cry.”

She takes a long shuddering breath, breathes him in again, them again. She’ll never forget how this room smells. Never as long as she lives. She hadn’t known it was possible to smell the way she’d always imagined home to feel like.

“ _ Stop _ it,” he growls again and this time it’s his thumb, not his lips brushing her tears away. “Do you really think you’re not good enough? Do you really think you’re anything less than perfect in every way? What kind of Alpha doesn’t have more confidence than they know what to do with? As though my fucking parents didn’t wish  _ you _ were their kid, not me.”

“Shut up,” she snaps at him. “You’re their son.”

“And you’re their perfect princess aren’t you? The kid they always wanted. The  _ Alpha _ —”

“I’m not. They’re not my family. I don’t get to  _ have _ a family. My parents don’t want me, the Omega I want doesn’t want me—I’m nothing. I’m no one.”

“Not to me.”

Her words had slipped out—because she hadn’t, actually, planned to tell him any of that. She’d been determined to get  _ him _ to say something, to understand  _ him _ better, not to have that black wound opened to those deep eyes of his. She certainly hadn’t expected him to reply like that.

She blinks up at him.

“What?”

“Not to me,” he replies. “You’re not nothing, or no one. You never have been.” He lets out a bitter laugh. “As if you aren’t everything I’ve wanted since the second I met you. But what would you want with  _ me? _ ”

For the first time since she’d started crying, Rey feels back in control. She reaches up with her hand and cups his cheek. His skin is greasy and sweaty because it’s not like he’s showered in days, but it’s also unexpectedly soft. “Was it because they were Alphas?” she asks him again. “Because I’m an Alpha? Do you think that they don’t want you because you’re—”

“I’m not what I’m supposed to be, am I?” he says brutally. “Aren’t Alphas supposed to want Omegas? Not for kids, apparently. And none of the others has ever stuck around. No Alpha I’ve ever been in heat with wants to keep me, my own fucking parents don’t want me. It’s all the same, isn’t it?”

“So when you say don’t make a promise you can’t keep, you mean—”

And he cuts her off, “That I don’t trust things said in heat and I don’t trust things said out of duty, ok? And you’ve done both.”

“That’s convenient,” she says, rolling her eyes. “It means no matter what I say, I don’t get to prove it to you—that I want you, that I mean it when I say that I’ll keep you safe, that I’ll try to be the best Alpha for you that I—”

And his mouth covers hers, his tongue swiping into her mouth, shutting her up. Her fingers clutch at his face, she arches her back up to press her heart to his chest and something’s different now. She’s not sure what it is. What’s different now?

“You already are,” he tells her. 

“And I don’t get to keep you,” she says. “Right? Say it. Go on. You’re going to leave me behind, just like my parents. You’re going to assume I’m  _ your _ parents because you’re a coward and won’t let me prove it to you. You won’t prove it to  _ me _ you’re not everything I thought you were and—”

When had he gotten hard? He hadn’t been whining or whimpering for her. Maybe his heat really is fading. Maybe all this is just the beginning of the end. But he is hard and pressing into her and his hips are pistoning against hers now, his face is buried in her neck and the noises he’s making…

She wouldn’t call them cries of pleasures, the moans or grunts that had burned themselves into her ears in the past two days. It sounds like he’s fighting something, sucking at her skin, holding burying himself in her as he goes faster and faster and faster.

This time, when Rey pushes him off her so that his back is on the bed again, he doesn’t resist her. His eyes are bloodshot and his lips are swollen and all she wants…

“I want to prove it to you,” she tells him. “That I mean it. That I’ll keep you safe. I want you to prove it to me.” She’s bucking on him, her breasts are jiggling on her chest and the look in his eyes is going to be enough to sustain her for months, years because he’s blazing up at her. His hands climb from her hips to her sides to her breasts to her shoulders. “Can you? Can we?”

His eyes roll into the back of his head at that one little word.  _ We _ .

He’s lurching up underneath her, his abs rippling, his hands at the back of her neck, stroking little circles into her hair, and he’s moaning her name again and again, like he’s lost a battle—or won it maybe. She wraps her arms around him, her hips slowing her fingers tracing their way down his spine to his gland and she presses two fingers lightly against it. 

And he’s convulsing, coming hard inside her and she clenches around him, holding him, taking as much of him in as she can as he breathes and moans, his head in her neck again. “I can,” he whispers as he comes back to himself. “I can. I want to. Rey—I—”

And the rest is lost in her own orgasm, washing warm and sweet over her. No orgasm has been like this before. They’d been a release, but not a relief, not a beginning, not a crescendo into something bigger, something newer. 

Her hands are still on his mating gland, holding it like it’s something precious to her as awareness returns to her. Her body is still rolling, clenching at him, pulling him deeper into her, but it’s not overpowering. She isn’t even sure it’s aftershocks. It feels like she’s still coming, still holding him in, but it’s a quieter part of the song now, but hasn’t lost its sweetness.

“I’m afraid,” he whispers to her and there it is—the battle he’d been losing. “I’m afraid of this. But that’s not going to stop me. I don’t want anyone else to have you, I don’t want anyone else to have me.” And the one he’d been winning.

“So we start there,” she tells him. 

And he nods. He pulls them back down onto the bed. She’s still coming. It hasn’t faded completely just yet.

-

The coffee shop is not particularly nice, or cheap, or welcoming. The chai latte in Rey’s hand is—according to what she told him with a shrug—nothing to write home about, and Ben hasn’t had a sip of his black coffee yet, but his expectations are not very high. Really, the only reason they picked here as their meeting spot is that it’s exactly halfway between his apartment and hers.

“How are you?” she asks with a soft smile, and it’s apparent that it holds a different meaning than the careless  _ ‘How are you?’ _ she’d thrown at him a few minutes earlier in front of the coffee shop’s door. This one means, quite transparently,  _ “How are you now that your heat is over and you’ve had a couple of days to let your body rest and your head heal,” _ and Ben cannot bring himself to answer  _ “Good,” _ this time around.

“I’m not sure.”

She tilts her head and takes another sip of her mediocre chai. 

“Confused, I think.” He is clutching his paper cup too tight; he lifts his hand to scratch his temple, but ends up running it through his hair. “Not sure if I made up what I think happened, or—”

“You didn’t.” Rey’s voice is limpid and clear. Too much so.

“We were both… The hormones. And you don’t even know what it is that I remember, and—”

“Ben.” She leans forward to cover his hand with hers, and the warmth of it reverberates up his arm and through his entire body. “Ben.” 

One of the reasons they decided to meet on neutral ground for this is that they knew  _ this _ was going to happen. She has seen him through a heat, and she has taken care of him so well, and his body remembers. It would be so easy to just fall back on how compatible they are and forget that they are here to talk, but… 

He pulls his fingers back. “The first time we met, you called me a monster.” It needs to be said, if they want to move on from this. It needs to be talked about, no matter how painful. Except that Rey is looking at him confused, blinking like he just spoke in an unknown language.

“I… I didn’t. I never did.”

“In that bar. With Dameron. You were wasted and you came to me and told me…”  _ That I was a monster _ .

Rey shakes her head, and appears to be even more confused. “No, Ben. The first time we met was after that benefit event, when you pushed Han into that window. And  _ you _ were wasted.”

“What? I…” He scowls. _How does she know that? She wasn’t there, was she?_ And then he sees his own bewilderment mirrored in Rey’s expression and he realizes that they were both being absolutely sloshed in the other’s first memory of them. He exhales just as Rey hides her face in her hands, and after a few seconds the only word he can muster is,

“Shit.”

Rey nods, clearly shaken. “Shit, indeed. I… Ben, I am so sorry if I ever told you— ”

“No, I get it.”

“Ben—”

“If that was the beginning, then—”

“You’re not a monster. Even your dad told me not to judge you for it and I did anyway.”

Ben sits there, stunned. “He did?”

Rey nods. Then she takes a slow breath.

“I talked with your parents.”

“You—”

“Not what you’re thinking.” She raises her hands in a calming gesture. “Not about the fact that we spent your heat together, even though… I think Leia might have been able to smell you on me, I don’t know.” Rey winces, and so does Ben. “But... I asked her. About…”

It feels like it’s Ben’s time to be encouraging, so he nods. 

“About how… how they reacted. When you presented.” He purses his lips, and Rey must realize it, because she hurries to continue. “They have so many regrets, Ben. So many.” Her eyes are getting shiny. Misty. “But it’s not because… They were worried about you. And they didn’t know how to be good parents to someone they felt they couldn’t fundamentally understand. And…” Rey shakes her head, smiling a beautiful, reassuring smile at him. When she reaches again for his hand, he lets her. “I’m not saying you should forgive them. And this… it’s your business, yours and your parents’. But it was important for me to say, because…” The tears are falling freely, now. “Because it seems to me like you have decided, somewhere deep inside yourself, that you are unlovable, or unworthy, and… I know too well how that feels, and I just can’t let you go on thinking that, even if you’ve changed your mind and you don’t want me anymore—”

His chair screeches against the floor as he moves it, dragging it closer to Rey’s. Once he has her in his arms, her scent is as beautiful as always, even mixed with the salt of her tears and the fear that he will actually…

“I do.” He whispers it in her hair. “I really do.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Rey, I—there is nothing I want more than trying to make this work. If I... if…”  _ If I  _ can _ be worthy. If I can prove it to you, how much you deserve. If you will have me. Alpha.  _

“Ben, It’s not because…” She wipes her cheeks, and inhales a shuddering breath, looking hesitant. “What you said. About none of your Alphas wanting to keep you… I don’t want you to think that I’m your only option, or that—”

“No, Rey. No. I didn’t want any of them.” He grimaces. “Some tried to get in touch with me, after my heats, and…” He had ghosted them. Or he had gone on dates with them, and been at his worst. He’d had no interest in them. Not before meeting Rey, and most definitely not  _ after _ her. Not when he knew that they couldn’t possibly compare. Not when he knew she wanted him too. “If you want to try… It’s you, Rey. I’m in it for you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading <3 We hope you've enjoyed! We've had a blast sharing it with you.

**Author's Note:**

> hi you can find ali on twitter [here](http://twitter.com/EverSoAli) and celia [here](https://linktr.ee/crossingwinter) \o/ <3


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